Verdi Helps Restore Ever-worthy Pasta To Its Fare Value

March 23, 1986|By Mark Knoblauch.

Italian-American restaurants are reclaiming their former position as some of Chicago`s most popular eateries. A plate of pasta and a bit of meat are the ultimate in comfort food to many people who have tired of nouvelle cuisine`s excesses but who aren`t ready to return to old-fashioned steak and potatoes.

The West Side`s Verdi Restaurant typifies this rejuvenation of Italian-American cooking with its emphasis on traditional tomato sauces and unsurprising meat and fish dishes. Verdi isn`t a particularly inventive restaurant, but what it cooks it cooks competently, and it provides a meal that anybody can appreciate without spending a lot of money.

Verdi`s Italian menu doesn`t come from any long-standing old-world family tradition. Its Iranian owner, Polish waitress, one Mexican and one Italian chef make Verdi a veritable United Nations.

Despite its plainness, Verdi`s dining room is pleasant enough. Dark green plastic tablecloths contrast with cream colored walls. Indirect lighting from the floor level keeps the room not too bright, not too dim. Customers sitting near the recessed lights have to be careful not to put coats or purses too close to them because the heat can start a meltdown of plastic handbags.

Although Verdi offers full bar service, the best way to stimulate appetites is with a bottle of wine from Verdi`s brief and sensibly priced list of decent Italian vintages. Skip the carafe wines because bottled selections are so much superior and their prices insignificantly different.

Ask the waitress for the night`s appetizer specials. Best among them is a cold vegetable dish pairing broccoli and chopped tomatoes in olive oil and lemon juice dressing loaded with minced garlic. Substituting ripe homegrown tomatoes for the hothouse variety would improve this dish, but the dressing`s intensity makes up for some of the shortcomings of out-of-season vegetables.

French-fried calamari attracts with its light breading and tenderness. Nothing more than a wedge of lemon and a commonplace horseradish-tomato sauce dresses the squid. Because this calamari is so good, diners might naturally expect Verdi`s seafood salad to please equally. A strong sea odor betrays this mixture of squid, octopus and shrimp almost as soon as it arrives at table. The octopus and shrimp both turn out to be tender and fresh, but the squid has traveled way past its prime.

Verdi`s hot antipasto melds good items with some misses. Fried zucchini slices treat squash lovers to a fresh vegetable flavor, but an eggplant slice manages to be both bitter and dry. A baked clam swells with garlicky breadcrumb stuffing, and a single fried shrimp tastes just like one would expect any fried shrimp to taste. The only ``saucing`` for this melange of seafood and vegetables is two wedges of lemon.

Choice of soup or salad comes with entrees, and those experienced with Verdi home in on the restaurant`s exceptionally good salad. Big pieces of fresh romaine hold a light vinaigrette dressing spiked with grated cheese.

Soups don`t fare as well, an unexciting, mushy minestrone holding just a few white beans and some barley in addition to the usual assortment of vegetables. Cream of cauliflower may be a bit better, but its bland seasoning leaves no lasting impression.

Verdi offers fresh fish each night. One night`s good-tasting scrod turned out texturally disappointing with its mushy flesh falling apart. The fish`s accompanying broccoli is redundant for those who`ve already sampled the special broccoli appetizer. A side order of linguini delights with its simple, tomatoey marinara sauce.

Not content to serve only chicken vesuvio, Verdi offers its own creation: veal vesuvio. This variation on the classic Chicago entree has good roast potato wedges and a few black olives. Although the potatoes pick up garlic`s pungency, the three large veal scallops don`t profit from the treatment as well.

Verdi`s best accomplishments are its pastas, the simpler the better. Homemade ravioli are huge pasta pockets stuffed with cheese or meat under a gratineed marinara sauce. The rich sauce stops short of being so heavy that it overwhelms the stuffed pasta.

Linguini carbonara pleases fans of this Roman dish, but the large amount of bacon in the sauce makes it too smoky for some. Verdi`s tomato sauce works less well as a base in pasta primavera, a generous portion of linguini topped with mushrooms and zucchini.

Most enjoyable of Verdi`s pastas is a restrained version of fettuccini alfredo. The kitchen restrains itself from making the creamy noodles so rich they can`t be eaten. One night`s pasta special, called pasta alexandra tosses a few cooked shrimp into fettuccini alfredo for a dish that is more than the sum of its parts.

Surprisingly, for a restaurant whose name means ``green`` in Italian, Verdi offers no green noodles to its patrons.